"May I change my mind and have some of that coffee after all?" Grant said.
She looked at her uncontrolled hands and said: "Will you pour it out?"
She watched him as he poured, and said: "You are a very strange policeman."
"As I said to Liz Garrowby when she made the same remark: It may be your idea of policemen that's strange."
"If I had a sister like Liz how different my life would have been. I had no one but Marguerite. And when I heard that she had killed herself I suppose I just went a little crazy for a spell. How did you find out about Marguerite and me?"
"The police in San Francisco sent us an account of you, and in it your mother's name was given as Matt-son. After much too long an interval I remembered that in Who's Who in the Theatre, which I had been using one night to pass time while I waited for a telephone call, Marguerite Merriam's mother was also given as a Mattson. And since I had been looking for some connection between you and Walter, it seemed that I might have found it if you and Marguerite were cousins."
"Yes. We were more. We were both only children. Our mothers were Norwegian, but one married in Britain and one in America. And then, when I was fifteen, my mother took me to England, and I met Marguerite for the first time. She was nearly a year older than me, but she seemed younger. Even then she was brilliant. Everything she did had a—a shining quality. We wrote to each other every week from then on, and every year until my parents died we came to England in the summer, and I saw her."
"How old were you when your parents died?”
"They died in a flu epidemic when I was seventeen. I sold the pharmacy but kept the photographic side, because I liked it and was good at it. But I wanted to travel. To photograph the world and everything that was beautiful in it. So I took the car and went West. I wore pants in those days just because they were comfortable and cheap, and because when you are five feet ten you don't look your best in girlish things. I hadn't thought of using them as—as camouflage until one day when I was leaning over the engine of the car a man stopped and said: 'Got a match, bud?' and I gave him a light; and he looked at me and nodded and said: 'Thanks, bud,' and went away without a second glance. That made me think. A girl alone is always having trouble—at least in the States she is—even a girl of five feet ten. And a girl has a more difficult time getting an 'in' in a racket. So I tried it out for a little. And it worked. It worked like a dream. I began to make money on the Coast. First photographing people who wanted to be movie actors, and then photographing actors themselves. But every year I came to England for a little. As me. My name actually is Leslie, but mostly they called me Lee. She always called me Lee."
"So your passport is a woman's one."
"Oh, yes. It is only in the States that I am Leslie Searle. And not all the time there."
"And all you did before going to the Westmorland was to hop over to Paris, and lay the track of Leslie Searle in case anyone proved inquisitive."
"Yes. I've been in England for some time. But I didn't actually think I'd need that track. I meant to do away with Leslie Searle too. To find some joint end for Walter and him. So that it would not be apparent that it was murder."
"Whether it was murder or just, as it turned out, leaving Whitmore in the soup, it was a pretty expensive amusement, wasn't it?"
"Expensive?"
"One very paying photographer's business, one complete gent's outfit in very expensive suitings, and assorted luggage from the best makers. Which reminds me, you didn't steal a glove of Liz Garrowby's, did you?"
"No, I stole a pair. Out of the car pocket. I hadn't thought of gloves, but I suddenly realised how convincing women's gloves are. If there is any doubt, I mean, as to your sex. They are almost as good as lipstick. You forgot my lipstick, by the way—in the little parcel. So I took that pair of Liz's. They wouldn't go on, of course, but I meant to carry them. I grabbed them in a hurry out of my collar drawer because Walter was coming along the passage calling to know if I was ready, and later I found that I had only one. Was the other one still there in the drawer?"
"It was. With the most misleading results."
"Oh!" she said, and looked amused and human for the first time. She thought for a little and then said: "Walter will never take Liz for granted again. That is one good thing I have done. It is poetic justice that it should have been a woman who did that. It was clever of you to guess that I was a woman just from the outside of a little parcel."
"You do me too much honour. It never even crossed my mind that you might be a woman. I merely thought that Leslie Searle had gone away disguised as a woman. I thought they were probably your things, and that he had gone to you. But the giving up of the whole of Searle's life and belongings puzzled me. He wouldn't do that unless he had another personality to step into. It was only then that I began to wonder whether Searle was masquerading and wasn't a man at all. It didn't seem as wild an idea as it might have, because I had so lately seen that case of arrest for theft that turned out so surprisingly. I had seen how easily it could be done. And then there was you. Staring me in the face, so to speak. A personality all ready for Searle to dissolve into. A personality who had most conveniently been painting in Scotland while Searle was fooling the intelligentsia in Orfordshire." His glance went to the art display. "Did you hire these for the occasion, or did you paint them?"
"Oh, I painted them. I spend my summers in Europe painting."
"Ever been in Scotland?"
"No."
"You must go and see it sometime. It's grand. How did you know that Suilven had that 'Look-at-me!' look?"
"That is the way it looked on the postcard. Are you Scottish? Grant is a Scottish name, isn't it?"
"A renegade Scot. My grandfather belonged to Strathspey." He looked at the serried ranks of canvas evidence and smiled. "As fine and wholesale and convincing an alibi as ever I saw."
"I don't know," she said, doubtfully, considering them. "I think to another painter they might be far more of a confession. They're so—arrogantly destructive. And angry. Aren't they? I would paint them all differently today now that I have known Liz, and— grown up, and Marguerite has died in my heart as well as in reality. It is very growing-up to find that someone you loved all your Life never existed at all. Are you married, Inspector?"
"No. Why?"
"I don't know," she said vaguely. "I just wondered how you understood so quickly about what had happened to me over Marguerite. And I suppose one expects married people to be more sympathetic to emotional vagaries. Which is quite absurd, because they are normally far too cluttered up with their own emotional problems to have spare sympathy. It is the unattached person who—who helps. Won't you have some more coffee?"
"You make coffee even better than you paint."
"You haven't come to arrest me, or you wouldn't be drinking my coffee."
"Quite right. I wouldn't. I wouldn't even drink the coffee of a practical joker."
"But you don't mind drinking with a woman who planned long and elaborately to kill someone?"
"And changed her mind. There are quite a few people I would willingly have killed in my time. Indeed, with prison no more penitential than a not very good public school, and the death sentence on the point of being abolished, I think I'll make a little list, à la Gilbert. Then when I grow a little aged I shall make a total sweep—ten or so for the price of one—and retire comfortably to be well cared-for for the rest of my life."
"You are very kind," she said irrelevantly. "I haven't really committed any crime," she said presently, "so they can't prosecute me for anything, can they?"
"My dear Miss Searle, you have committed practically every known crime in the book. The worst and most unforgivable being to waste the time of the overworked police forces of this country."
"But that isn't a crime, is it? That is what the police are there for. I don't mean: to have their time wasted, but to make sure that there has been nothing fishy about a happening. There isn't any law that can punish one for what you have
called a practical joke, surely?"
"There is always 'breach of the peace.' It is quite wonderful what a variety of things can be induced to come under the heading of breach of the peace."
"And what happens when you breach the peace?"
"You are treated to a little homily and fined."
"Fined!"
"A quite inappropriate sum, more often than not."
"Then I shan't be sent to prison?"
"Not unless you have done something that I don't yet know about And I wouldn't put it past you, as they say in Strathspey."
"Oh, no," she said. "No. You really do know all about me. I don't know how you know all you do, if it comes to that."
"Our policemen are wonderful. Hadn't you heard?"
"You must have been pretty sure that you knew all about me before you came looking for that brown fleck in my iris."
"Yes. Your policemen are wonderful too. They looked up the births in Jobling, Connecticut, for me. The infant that Mr. and Mrs. Durfey Searle took with them when they left Jobling for points south, was, they reported, female. After that I would have been surprised to death if there had been no brown fleck."
"So you ganged up on me." Her hands had stopped shaking, he noticed. He was glad that she had reached the stage of achieving a flippancy. "Are you going to take me away with you now?"
"On the contrary. This is my farewell to you."
"Farewell? You can't have come to take farewell of someone you don't know."
"Where our mutual acquaintance is concerned I, as they say, have the advantage of you. I may be quite new to you—or practically new—but you have been in my hair for the last fourteen days, and I shall be very glad to get you out."
"Then you don't take me to a police station or anything like that?"
"No. Not unless you show any signs of beating it out of the country. In which case an officer would no doubt appear at your elbow with a pressing invitation to remain."
"Oh, Fm not going to run away. I am truly sorry for what I have done. I mean, for the trouble—and I suppose the—the misery I have caused."
"Yes. Misery is the appropriate word, I feel."
"I am sorry most of all for what Liz must have suffered."
"It was gratuitously wicked of you to stage that quarrel at the Swan, wasn't it?"
"Yes. Yes, it was unforgivable. But he maddened me so. He was so smug. So unconsciously smug. Everything had always been easy for him." She saw the comment in his face, and protested: "Yes, even Marguerite's death! He went straight from that into Liz's arms. He never really knew desolation. Or fear. Or despair. Or any of the big, grinding things in life. He was quite convinced that nothing irretrievable would ever happen to him. If his 'Marguerite' died there would always be a 'Liz' there. I wanted him to suffer. To be caught in something that he couldn't get out of. To meet trouble and for once be stuck with it. And you can't say I wasn't right! He'll never be so smug again. Will he? Will he, then!"
"No, I suppose not. Indeed, I'm sure not."
"I'm sorry Liz had to be hurt. I would go to prison if I could undo that. But I've given her a much better Walter than the one she was going to marry. She really is in love with that poor egotistical wretch of a creature, you know. Well, I've made him over for her. I'll be surprised if he isn't a new man from now on."
"If I don't go, you'll be proving to me that you are a public benefactor instead of an offender under breach-of-the-peace."
"What happens to me now? Do I just sit and wait?"
"A constable will no doubt serve you solemnly with a summons to appear at a magistrate's court. Have you a lawyer, by the way?"
"Yes, I have an old man in a funny little office who keeps my letters till I want them. He's called Bing, Parry, Parry, and Bing, but I don't think he is any of them, actually."
"Then you had better go and see him and tell him what you have done."
"All of it?"
"The relevant bits. You can probably leave out the quarrel at the Swan, and anything else ¿at you're particularly ashamed of." She reacted to that, he noticed. "But don't leave out too much. Lawyers like to know; and they are almost as unshockable as the police."
"Have I shocked you, Inspector?"
"Not noticeably. You've been a pleasant change from the armed robberies and the blackmail and the confidence tricks."
"Shall I see you when I am charged?"
"No. A lowly sergeant will be there to give evidence, I expect."
He took his hat and prepared to go, looking once more at the one-man show of the West Highlands.
"I really ought to take a picture with me as a souvenir," he said.
"You can have any one you want. They are going to be obliterated anyhow. Which would you like?" It was obvious that she did not quite know whether he was serious or not.
"I don't know. I like Kishorn, but I can't remember Kishorn being as aggressive as that. And if I took the Coolin there would be no room for me in the room too."
"But it's only thirty inches by-------" she was beginning, and then understood. "Oh. I see. Yes, it is intrusive."
"I don't think I have time to wait and choose. I must leave it, I'm afraid. But thank you for the offer." "Come back one day when you have more time and choose at your leisure," she said. "Thank you. I may do that."
"When the court has made an honest woman of me." She went to the stairs with him. "It's a bit of an anti-climax, isn't it? To set out to kill someone and end with breach of the peace."
The detachment in this caught his attention, and he stood for a long moment looking at her. After a little he said, as one giving judgment: "You're cured."
"Yes, Tm cured," she said sadly. "I shall never be green again. It was lovely while it lasted."
"It's nice grown-up, too," Grant said comfortingly, and went away down the stairs. When he opened the door he looked back to find that she was still there watching him. "By the way," he said, "what are accessories?"
"What? Oh!" She laughed a little. "Belts and bibs and bows and brash little bouquets for women to put in their hair."
"Goodbye," Grant said.
"Goodbye, Detective-Inspector Grant. I am grateful to you."
He went away into the sunlight, at peace with the As he walked down to the bus stop a lovely mad notion came to him. He would ring up Marta and ask her if she wanted another woman for Saturday night, and she would say yes bring anyone you would like, and he would bring them Lee Searle.
But of course he could not do that It would be sadly unbecoming in an officer of the Criminal Investigation Department; indicating a lightness of mind, a frivolity, that could only be described as deplorable in the circumstances. It was all very well for the Lee Searles of this world, people who had not yet quite grown up, to indulge their notions, but for adults, and sober adults at that, there were the conveniences.
And of course there were compensations. Life was entirely constructed of compensations.
The fantastical was for adolescents; for adults there were adult joys.
And no joy of his "green" years had ever filled his breast with a more tingling anticipation than the thought of Superintendent Bryce's face when he made his report this morning.
It was a glorious and utterly satisfying prospect.
He could hardly wait.
To Love and Be Wise Page 20
